Comment by rayiner
13 hours ago
This seems anti democratic. How can we prevent small minorities from hassling everyone until they get their way?
13 hours ago
This seems anti democratic. How can we prevent small minorities from hassling everyone until they get their way?
In the big picture, culture progresses towards equality over time, although it see-saws and moves very slowly relative to a human lifespan. Small minorities of hate groups, for example KKK, are not able to influence society in the long-run because their message is antithetical to this natural imperative. Whereas advocacy for racial minorities, gender minorities, and feminism progresses over time.
I think that might be wishful thinking.
It is privileging 200 of history verses several thousand years of human history.
Several thousand years of human history in fact argues for their point of tendency towards equality being a natural imperative, and artificially enforced caste systems being unnatural and instinctively distasteful to people.
See Graber's last book before he died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything?wprov=s...
2 replies →
> natural imperative
It happens because trust me bro.
What if the small minority is being oppressed and killed? There are so many reasons why a small minority might need to protest within a democracy. "This seems anti democratic" is a bizarre take.
3.5% forcing their preferences on all the others is obviously anti-democratic.
Unless you don't know what democracy means
It seems that it's you who needs more education on the topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
You declare what this is democratic. Declaring the same by a country from the other side of the planet also helps. Worked fine for a certain democratic country in 2014.
seems is the key word. 3.5% - or any other % - actively engaging doesn't mean that if you cast a vote, 3.5% would support. Probably an order of magnitude more. People tend to be inert, even when they agree with something.
However, sometimes it is true that small minorities can hassle everyone until they get their way. This usually happens through lobbying, corruption and misinformation though, way easier than a peaceful protest if you are a small minority; with the added benefit of appearing to have a big majority of the population in your favor. See what populist far right movements are doing right now throughout the world.
In the US? You'd probably need to repeal the first amendment. Good luck with that.